"Hands Off!" anti-Trump/Musk protests first to rival 2017 #resistance

Donald Trump faces a low job approval rating, sinking economy, and now, harsh and mobilized public backlash

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Protests against President Donald Trump’s second term swept across the U.S. on Saturday, April 5, 2025. According to organizers, protesters met in thousands of cities ranging from major metroplexes such as New York — where over 100,000 people may have turned out to rally against Trump and his administration, including and especially Elon Musk — to small towns in Indiana, North Carolina, and Texas. In Washington, DC, thousands met at the Washington Monument to protest the president just across the street from the White House.

At first glance, the Saturday protests may appear as just another familiar display of progressive outrage against the president — an indicator of anger on the left but nothing else. However, it would be a mistake to make such an assumption. Data suggests the “Hands Off!” protests have churned up enough digital interest in resisting Trump to rival the protests held during his first term. And they arrive at a particularly critical moment for him — one marked not just by public opposition to individual policies, but by historically weak approval ratings and striking consequences of his economic policy. That makes the protests consequential, and worth paying attention to.

I. Anti-Trump/Musk protests rival 2017 interest

First, consider the breadth of the protests. Over 1,100 events unfolded across all 50 states, with significant turnout in many. One protest in Vermont was even allegedly the largest since a rally held opposing Trump’s inauguration. This scale of participation reflects a deep-seated concern over issues ranging from economic policies to civil liberties to government spending. Here’s a good collection of photos from the rallies across the U.S. Pay attention to what signs people are holding up.

Yet the protests on Saturday were not just big in physical space. Hashtags for "#buildtheresistance" and "#50501" (a reference to “50 protests, 50 states, one day”) were practically omnipresent on my social media timelines Saturday. And even as I write this, on Sunday morning April 6, photos from rallies are leading Reddit (perhaps not coincidentally, where people began organizing the protests).

To be sure, this is not just a product of my algorithms or the virtue of living in a center-left media bubble. Systematic data reveal heightened interest in protesting Trump, too.

Internet search traffic provides one objective benchmark for the digital footprint of various protests.¹ In the chart below, I’ve graphed monthly search traffic for the term “trump protest” on Google since January 1, 2017:

This graph shows the “Hands Off!” protests on April 5, 2025, generated nearly as much search interest as the protests during the first months of Trump’s first term. Notably, that includes the massive Women’s Marches across the country, which were the third largest in U.S. history. And while Saturday’s protests were nowhere near that large in attendance (the NYC gathering appears to be the largest, at 1/4the size of the largest Women’s March) they still have the potential to shape media coverage and highlight unpopular polls.

General search interest for the term “protest” even surpassed levels during Trump’s first term, except for the Summer 2020 protests on racial justice and policing. In other words, Saturday was either the second or third largest left-leaning protest since January 2017.

The volume of online news articles mentioning the word “protest” is also approaching, but still behind, 2017 and 2020 levels.

II. Protests are more visible than polls

Now consider that Trump’s job approval rating is currently in the mid-40s and heading down. In terms of his net approval, at -3.4 points Trump is doing worse than any other president at this point in their term:

Despite poor ratings, there is a softness, a weakness, to abstract numbers. Trump has so far been able to spin his ratings as irrelevant or the product of bad polling. And one could argue his administration is not particularly reactive to public opinion: After all, the president has not budged on tariffs, his key trade policy priority despite (a) that Americans broadly disapprove of the ones Trump has implemented and (b) that they have so far caused widespread economic panic and little else. Poll numbers can be excused on account of being removed from the “real world.”

In contrast, protests serve as a real rebuke of the president, held here in the physical world where all can see the scale of anger. Protests offer the public a material, visceral counterweight to the administration’s spin about “mandates” and providing “major reform” of government. And for organizers and Democratic leaders alike, they provide something polls, and tweets cannot: visible, large-scale proof of resistance that can be seen and felt in their own communities. That’s probably good for fundraising too.

III. The beginning of a trend?

It’s this intersection between political discontent and the physical world that may matter most for modern politics. In an era where much of politics is mediated through screens, the mass mobilization of people serves as a kind of anchoring point: proof that opposition isn’t just statistical, but structural, social, and spatial. Protests against the unpopular policies of an imperial presidency underscore the validity of polling data that can be used to reign leaders in.

As the 2026 midterm campaign cycle kicks off over the next six months, and begins in earnest with elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia this November, it’s the mental image of protests around the country that will transform abstract dissatisfaction into something more concrete — especially for voters who may not follow politics closely but are swayed by momentum, emotion, and community. It is one thing for the Democrats to be campaigning with public opinion on their side. It’s another for them to be doing it with the public literally and visibly on their side, too.

And time may yet exacerbate the incumbent party’s troubles, not soften them. If Trump continues to pursue a punishing and nonsensical trade policy, consequences from a further sinking stock market to economic recession are possible, perhaps even probable. And with a battle over the federal budget on the horizon, concerns about cutting funding for health care and Social Security as well as Elon Musk’s controversial role in “efficiency” would likely become more salient, not less.

In short: While the “Hands Off” protests may not change policy overnight, they offer the first major sign that resistance to Trump’s second term isn’t just an artifact of polling or too small to be consequential. That makes them worth taking seriously.

1. Google Search traffic is not a perfect representation of interest in a topic (you can imagine discussing or searching for a topic without going through Google) but it does provide a consistent data source with which to make comparisons.